Mistess of the Groom

by Susan Napier

  After he had redressed the wound Jane left brother and sister finishing the dishes and sat in the lumpy old easy chair under the window in the lounge with her pen­cil and the sheaf of sketches that were beginning to germinate an idea in the back of her mind. When the others joined her she was sufficiently immersed to have the excuse of turning down Ryan's suggestion of a card game, so a two-handed game was played until Melissa tired of losing and perversely chose to take a dig at Jane's self-absorption by plucking up one of the sketches as it slipped off the faded arm of the chair.

  The disdain slid off her mobile face, her eyes bright­ening with interest as she snatched up another drawing. 'Hey, fashion designs! Far out! I thought you were sketching boring scenery or something. I like this lay­ered look-'

  She suddenly remembered she was enthusing to the enemy and tried to affect uninterest as Jane explained that she had often sketched an outfit that she wanted her dressmaker to sew rather than choosing an existing de­sign from a book of patterns or a fashion magazine.

  It was left to Ryan to pick up the conversation and ask to see more of the painstakingly executed drawings, and his sister scowled when he expressed a surprised admiration that warmed Jane with pride. Melissa im­mediately trashed the moment by gushing about the de­signer who had made such a wonderful job of Ava's wedding and bridesmaids' dresses.

  'I don't suppose Ava could bear to keep it after what happened...'

  Ryan didn't turn a hair at this gross insensitivity. 'Per­haps she wore it for her second wedding and imbued it with happier memories,' he said sardonically.

  Jane knew the pain he must be shielding with his cyni­cism. 'No, she and Conrad were married quietly in a register office-' She broke off, biting her lip as Ryan's gaze snapped to attention.

  'Oh? Were you there?' Jane looked away. 'Were you one of their witnesses, Jane?'

  'Yes,' she admitted uncomfortably.

  'And a godmother to their first child, so I understand. Curiouser and curiouser ... ' he said softly. He might have pursued his line of thought, but Melissa distracted him by deciding it was dark enough to turn on the lights and starting an argument when she discovered she was sup­posed to use lamps and candles that were probably a fire hazard or would give off toxic fumes, or burn up all the oxygen in the room.

  By the following afternoon Jane was on the point of throttling her additional unwanted guest. There was no eluding Melissa's constant, carping, competitive chap­eronage, and with Ryan refusing to budge or temper his possessive attitude towards Jane-indeed it had become subtly more intense since his sister's arrival-she was driven to deliver a gunfighter's ultimatum: the cramped cottage wasn't big enough for the three of them. The portable stereo with its head-banging music and floor­ pounding bass had been the last straw.

  As she'd expected, Ryan declined to tremble at the empty threat, but he did suggest a compromise-the only one he was prepared to consider.

  If Jane agreed to spend the next few days in the five ­bedroomed house up the hill then, as soon as her burnt hand was fully functional again, she could return to her cottage with a guarantee that she would be left in peace. In the meantime she would have all the privacy she de­sired, a superb cook-housekeeper to wait on her instead of Ryan's unsettling personal attentions, and Melissa kept firmly off her back.

  'Is that possible?' said Jane wryly.

  'In my house, she obeys my rules. If she doesn't like them, she can go back to Auckland.'

  'And afterwards, when I come back here ... you'll go away and leave me alone?' she said cautiously. 'That's a promise?'

  His thick black eyelashes screened his eyes, his blunt, handsome features tight and inscrutable; his was a gambler’s face, intent on winning the pot by out-reading the opposition.

  'Yes, if that's what you want...'

  CHAPTER NINE

  NO WONDER Melissa had been so bitchy about the dep­rivations that her brother had been made to suffer, thought Jane several hours later as she left her room to wander through the magnificent two-storeyed holiday house perched on the headland above Piha. Compared to Great-Aunt Gertrude's, this place was a palace!

  The long modem Mediterranean-style house was bounded at the rear by a dense stand of virgin native bush and the north-facing aspect captured the sun all day. The outflung arms of the building curved in a broad V-shape towards the cliff, as if reaching out to embrace the spectacular view, and from her upstairs bedroom, which opened out, like all the other bedrooms, onto its own private balcony, Jane could see the whole of Piha, ­even a wedge of the rusty iron roof that she had been persuaded to temporarily abandon.

  Once he had had her agreement, the shift in premises had been accomplished with Ryan's usual ruthless effi­ciency, leaving little time for second thoughts. Jane had no reason to feel piqued that he had merely given her a brief tour of his house before disappearing with a vague murmur about letting her settle in. Melissa, too, had floated off, gleefully smug that her obnoxious behaviour had achieved one of her primary aims.

  Jane had her doubts. She got the feeling that it was Ryan who had been the main orchestrater of events. Melissa had merely been the deus ex machina by which he had distracted and manoeuvred Jane into accepting a deal that she would otherwise have flatly refused to even consider. Ryan could hardly have continued to escalate his campaign of seduction in the poky little cottage, with his sister breathing down their necks, alert to every creak of the floorboards, every stray touch and heated look. But here, in comfort and luxury, with privacy locks on all the bedroom doors and little distraction from her rap­idly healing burn, Jane was all too vulnerable to his dan­gerously seductive persistence.

  Jane's mouth dried at the memory of Ryan's love­making and, since she had drifted in the general direction of the kitchen, she decided on a cold drink to cure her hot flush.

  She hesitated at the door when she saw a small, spare, middle-aged woman with a short helmet of silver hair bustling back and forth between the sink and central work-island, obviously preparing vegetables for dinner. This must be the housekeeper who was employed on a part-time basis whenever the family was in residence, Jane guessed. The one that Ryan had mentioned was a superb cook.

  She cleared her throat and the woman looked up from her chopping board, surprise springing into her warm hazel eyes at the sight of Jane in her plain skirt and white cotton T-shirt, her feet in classy black flats and her hair rioting loose around her bare face.

  'Hello, I'm Jane Sherwood...' She faltered, not quite sure how to politely describe her turbulent relationship with Ryan.

  'Yes, I know.' The woman's face lit up in a generous smile that made Jane feel like an old and valued friend. 'What an awful time you've been having, my dear. I'm Peggy Mason. I won't offer to shake hands because I know you can't. Come on in and sit down. You look hot... would you like an iced tea?' She put down her knife, drying her hands on her apron. 'I find it just the thing in this heat. Sit here and I'll get you one.'

  She steered Jane onto a stool at the breakfast bar which divided the kitchen from an open living area, clicking her tongue sympathetically as she looked at the damaged hands. 'You poor thing-no wonder Ryan in­sisted you needed looking after. I bet it's terribly frus­trating .. .like being a baby all over again. Now, would you like something to eat with your glass of tea? I know you had lunch before you came, but dinner won't be served until quite late ... the family likes to eat out on the terrace and watch the sunset-'

  'Oh, no thank you, Mrs Mason,' said Jane, discon­certed by her familiarity yet irresistibly drawn by the woman's maternal warmth.

  'Call me Peggy.' She set down the iced tea and re­turned to her chopping, making little piles of celery and onion as she continued with a chiding frown, 'I hope you're not dieting. It's not a good thing to do when your body's been under a lot of pain or stress.'

  'I have lost a bit too much weight recently,' Jane was amazed to hear herself confess. 'But not on pur­pose ... and I think I'm starting to put it back on,' she added hurri
edly as Peggy frowned and she sensed an impending scold.

  But the housekeeper's vehement disapproval was di­rected elsewhere. 'Ryan has a lot to answer for! Melissa told me how you burnt your hand. I hope he apologised for causing you to hurt yourself!'

  Jane's smile was rueful. 'Well, it was mostly my own stupidity...' Both times, she added mentally, flattening out the strapped fingers of her left hand and experiencing the faint twinge that reminded her that if she had obeyed her original orders the healing would have been com­plete by now.

  Grey eyebrows rose sharply over hazel eyes. 'You're far too forgiving, my dear. A hefty dose of guilt is just what that boy needs to curb his tendency to play God!'

  'Well, he appears to be trying to make up for it. . .' Jane said weakly, suddenly realising that Peggy wasn't just referring to her physical injuries. By her easy manner she was obviously used to being treated as part of the family by the Blairs and must be aware of Ryan's vendetta, if not the reason for it. Her affection for him was plainly strong, but her natural sympathies seemed to lie with the underdog.

  'Oh? In what way?'

  Jane pinkened at the innocent question. 'Well, he's cooked me some marvellous meals,' she said hastily, burying her nose in her tea.

  'Mmm..' Peggy gave her an assessing look. 'He's pretty handy in the kitchen, I'll give him that.'

  And the bedroom! Jane's flush deepened as the thought popped into her head.

  'I wish I was-a good cook, I mean,' she stammered. 'My technique is still very much trial and error. Unfor­tunately I never learned the basics when I was young...'

  'Didn't your mother ever let you help her around the kitchen when you were little?'

  'We always had a cook and I wasn't supposed to get in the way. My mother left home when I was six,' Jane added impulsively.

  'I'm sorry,' said Peggy, with a quiet compassion that tapped a deep-seated need in Jane's subconscious.

  'Actually, I don't remember that much about her, ex­cept that she was dark and pretty and liked to laugh and went out a lot,' she admitted, her eyes darkening with memory. 'After she left, my father burnt all her photos and only mentioned her when he was in a rage, so I'm not sure if what I remember is real or a childish fantasy I've built up in my head.'

  'Do you mean you never saw her again after your parents separated?'

  Jane looked down at the glass she was slowly turning around in her clumsy grip, missing the warning glance that the hazel eyes directed over her head.

  'No ... she was just there one day and gone the next. It wasn't until a week later that my father told me she'd run off to Canada with her lover. He said she'd told him she didn't want to be saddled with the responsibility of a whining little brat like me.'

  Peggy almost dropped her knife, clearly appalled. 'He said that to a six-year-old child!'

  Jane had never found it easy to confide in people, instilled with her father's belief that if you were strong you didn't bother other people with your problems, es­pecially if they were emotional ones. But Peggy's em­pathy made it seem natural to open up.

  'He used to say that the reason she never bothered to send me birthday cards was because she obviously pre­ferred to forget I'd ever been born. He always managed to make me feel a failure for not being able to make her love me enough to stay ... '

  'That was very, very wrong of him,' Peggy said fiercely. 'It's never a child's fault when a marriage fails.'

  'He wasn't just wrong-he was lying,' Jane blurted out. 'He lied about their being divorced and he lied about her not caring what happened to me. You see, after my father died I was going through his safety deposit box and I found some old letters and documents about their separation agreement and a wrangle over child access.

  'My mother had gone to Canada with another man but she'd been killed in a car accident in Montreal a couple of months after she got there. Maybe she hadn't wanted to take me away with her, but it wasn't true that she wanted to pretend I never existed. There was corre­spondence from her lawyer, demanding assurances that I would be given any letters that she sent, and she'd asked my father to get me a passport so I could visit her. But then she was killed.

  'She died-and for years, until I stopped letting him know how much I cared, my father told me she was having too much fun with her new life to send me a birthday card!'

  There was a faint sound behind her and Jane jerked around, almost spilling the rest of her tea. Ryan was standing in the doorway, and from the grim look on his face he had been there for quite some time.

  'No wonder you believed me so easily when I told you about what your father had done to mine,' he rasped, entering the sunlit room, his white trousers and yellow shirt adding an extra dimension to its brightness. 'You knew it was just the kind of callous, conscienceless thing a bastard like him would do!'

  'Ryan!' Peggy Mason's hazel eyes were full of re­proach.

  'Sorry, but it's the truth and we all know it.' Ryan sighed as he went over and kissed the finely lined cheek. 'Hello, Mum, what are you doing here ... besides the ob­vious?' he said, looking wryly at Jane.

  'You're Ryan's mother?' Jane experienced a sinking feeling in her stomach as she looked from the tiny woman with whom she had felt such an instant kinship to the giant towering beside her, searching in vain for a resemblance. Now she knew why the housekeeper had seemed so well informed!

  'I thought you realised who I was when I introduced myself,' said Peggy in surprise. 'I'm sorry-I just as­sumed you'd know my second husband's surname. Who did you think I was?'

  'Probably another of my girlfriends,' said Ryan cru­elly. 'When Melissa turned up Jane thought she was some infatuated nymphet I was keeping on a string.'

  'No, I didn't!' she snapped. She smiled apologetically at his mother, deciding that in the long run her ignorance had probably done her a favour, easing what could other­wise have been a hideously awkward meeting. 'I'm afraid I just assumed you were the housekeeper...'

  Peggy's surprise turned to amused understanding. 'I see. And now you're embarrassed by your frankness. Don't be-I appreciated the insight and I'm sure you feel better for talking about it.'

  'You still haven't told me why you're here, Mum,' interrupted Ryan. 'I thought you said Steve had some wedding parties booked for this week and would be too busy for you to come down. And why are you cooking instead of Teresa?'

  'The school called for her to pick up her son-he apparently has chicken pox-so I told her that of course we could manage without a housekeeper for the next few days. And it's because Steve is going to be so busy that I thought I might as well come down and enjoy some of this wonderful beach weather.'

  Ryan picked up apiece of celery and crunched it be­tween strong white teeth as he studied her innocent ex­pression. 'So you're saying that Melissa didn't phone you to tell you what we were doing? This surprise visit has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that Jane and I are here-'

  'Well, that is a bit of a bonus, darling.' His mother patted his hard cheek fondly. 'Since it's too rare these days that I get to enjoy the company of both my children on holiday at the same time. Ryan hardly ever spends time at Piha any more,' she said to Jane, who was be­ginning to realise that his mother was more than a match for Ryan's shrewdness. 'The last time I tried to get him to stay more than a weekend he was chafing at the bit by the second day.'

  'I know what you mean,' Jane murmured wryly.

  'Do you?' She tilted her head in bird-like enquiry. 'Has he been an awful nuisance?'

  'No, I haven't! I've been trying to get Jane to rest.

  How long are you going to stay?' he asked bluntly.

  'Well, I don't know ... a few days at least-it depends on how I'm feeling. You know I don't usually have a timetable about these things.' The hazel eyes smiled at her son's open frustration.

  'Steve'll miss you-'

  'We don't live totally in each other's pockets, Ryan. It's not as if he's very far away.'

  He muttered something under his breath. 'What did you say,
darling?'

  'Nothing,' he gritted.

  Jane stood up, feeling awful. 'Oh, please! I think I should leave. I know you can't possibly want me in your home,' she said to the older woman. 'It's not as if I don't have somewhere to go--'

  'No, dammit!'

  'Nonsense, of course you mustn't leave.' Peggy's mellow voice of reason overrode Ryan's raw explosion. 'I've never believed in children being responsible for the sins of their fathers.' This was accompanied by a stem look that, to Jane's fascination, made Ryan thrust his bunched hands in his trouser pockets, his face darkening except for a thin white line around his compressed mouth.

  'From the sound of it you were as much a victim of your father as I was, so let there be no awkwardness about the past. As for what happened with Ava, well... that's all water under the bridge now. Isn't that right, Ryan?'

  He jerked his head, his eyes smouldering on Jane's embarrassed face. 'I've already told her that, but she won't believe me.'

  His mother's mouth pursed. 'You do surprise me, Ryan, and after all you've done for her, too!'

  He set his teeth at her sarcasm. 'I said I'd look after her and I will.'

  'How magnanimous of you. I hope you don't expect her to feel grateful.'

  Ryan wrenched a hand out of his pocket and ran it through his hair. 'For God's sake, Mum, what are you trying to do to me?'

  His mother smiled serenely. 'Just checking, darling.' Thinking that mother and son might like to have a discussion in private, Jane asked if she could put some personal laundry into the washing machine. Peggy ex­plained where it was, saying that if she needed help in doing anything she only had to ask for it.

  She did her small load of washing and spent what remained of the afternoon and on into the evening leaf­ing through the kind of fashion magazines she could no longer afford to buy, talking with Peggy in the kitchen and watching Melissa try to come to terms with her mother's kindness towards the enemy.